More than 40 killed in Iraq bombings

A series of bombings in Baghdad and a northern Iraqi town on Thursday killed at least 41 people and wounded more than 80, police said. Two successive suicide attacks in the town of Tal Afar, 420km north-west of Baghdad, killed 34 and wounded 60.

One suicide bomber detonated an explosives vest in the town.
A second similar attack occurred as people gathered to respond to the first blast, said a police official.

In Baghdad, seven people were killed and 20 were wounded by two bomb blasts in a market in Sadr City, a poor, Shi’ite Muslim area of the Iraqi capital.

Police said both bombs had been placed among rubbish piles in the popular market area.

The bloodshed following the United States-led invasion in 2003 has dropped sharply, but the northern ethnically and religiously mixed province of Nineveh remains Iraq’s most dangerous area.

Such attacks raise questions whether Iraqi forces can fend off renewed violence as they take the lead role for security from US troops. American combat troops withdrew from bases in city and town centres last month, a milestone in the planned gradual withdrawal of US forces by the end of 2011.—Reuters